Crowdfunding is a scam, Indiegogo specifically...

Not security specifically, but after the Zano on Kickstarter,  Onogofly on Indiegogo drone debacle,  and others, I realize that crowdfunding is just a wholesale way to sucker people out of their money- as evidence I present:

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/meet-the-pilot-smart-earpiece-language-translator--2#/

I kid you not.  A bable fish.  People want to believe.  As of today May 31st, there are 7771 backers paying $1,765,420 USD  that believe that this is possible.  I hope they understand that creating this using present technology is completely impossible without human interpreters. I hope the backers know that the creators are talented , optimistic dreamers who really want this to work, and that the creators aren't vicious scammers who are buying houses and sports cars with their ponzi-like proceeds.

I completely agree with them that this would be really cool. 

I just hope they won't be disappointed or think there's some sort of nanny-state that's going to protect them.

How are we supposed to protect all the people like this from computer scammers?!
 
At least Paypal is doing something about it - and changed their terms and conditions to exclude "crowdfunding platforms" from their "Purchase Protection" program. 

At best, crowdfunded platforms are Gamblin, at worst, another way to part the well-intentioned from their hard-earned money.

Good article about Ad Blockers - balanced coverage

Is a truce possible in the ad-blocking war?

 http://www.csoonline.com/article/3063741/application-security/is-a-truce-possible-in-the-ad-blocking-war.html#tk.rss_all?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

 [Favorite Quote:]

  Performance Pricings Holdings founder Ari Rosenberg wrote in Online Publishing Insider last fall that, “(When) consumer needs are paramount to those of the advertiser … consumers accept advertising” – what he called “an arranged marriage.”

The opposite is happening, he wrote. “The online display advertising industry is a catastrophic failure because the IAB has condoned and promoted publishing behavior that has led to this ad-blocking epidemic.
“Ad-blockers have given consumers a voice in the online ad world – and that voice is loud, it is clear and it is filled with venom.”
Consumers, he wrote, are fed up with targeted ads that make them feel like they are being stalked, with auto-play video ads, with large ads that slow the loading of pages and especially allowing the purchase of ads through exchanges, “so our computers get infected with malware.”

So True

Police Drones can be hacked with $40 device

Article states that encryption was not an option

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/16/04/01/235238/40-hardware-is-enough-to-hack-28000-police-drones-from-2km-away

LA Times: Ransomware infects two more hospitals.

Two more Southern California hospitals have been attacked by hackers who infiltrated their computer systems with ransomware and demanded payment to unlock the data, officials said.
Favorite part:

 "FBI’s Eimiller said the bureau does not recommend paying a ransom."

That's not what Business Insider says:

Reported last week by Security Ledger, Joseph Bonavolonta, the Assistant Special Agent who oversees the FBI’s CYBER and Counterintelligence Program in Boston, spoke at the 2015 Cyber Security Summit and advised that companies infected with ransomware may want to give in to the criminal’s demands.
“The ransomware is that good,” Bonavolonta explained to an audience of business and technology leaders during the Q&A. “To be honest, we often advise people just to pay the ransom.”

http://www.businessinsider.com/fbi-recommends-paying-ransom-for-infected-computer-2015-10

Hmm, so what is it?

I think we need to figure it out ourselves.    (www.googleityourself.com)

Upgrade your iPhone 6 from 16GB to 128GB

 Upgrade your iPhone 6 from 16GB to 128GB

This is awesome!

Apple detects replaced fingerprint scanner but not replacing the whole flash chip? seriously?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wbbW-3be1g



 

Not security, but Twitter and Comcast speed test fun

I found this on ARS - 3-Feb-2016

Angry Comcast customer set up Raspberry Pi to auto-tweet speed test results
http://arstechnica.com/business/2016/02/comcast-customer-made-bot-that-tweets-at-comcast-when-internet-is-sl\ow/


Which pointed to the twitter bot code on rasp-pi
http://pastebin.com/WMEh802V

Which ran speedtest-cli from Github
https://github.com/sivel/speedtest-cli

which showed these results
daddy@raspi ~/speedtest $ ./speedtest-cli
Retrieving speedtest.net configuration...
Retrieving speedtest.net server list...
Testing from Comcast Cable (50.169.221.148)...
Selecting best server based on latency...
Hosted by Axcelx Technologies LLC (Somerville, MA) [71.49 km]: 35.279 ms
Testing download speed........................................
Download: 14.51 Mbit/s
Testing upload speed..................................................
Upload: 5.68 Mbit/s

EFF Pries More Information on Zero Days from the Government’s Grasp

EFF Pries More Information on Zero Days from the Government’s Grasp

Until just last week, the U.S. government kept up the charade that its use of a stockpile of security vulnerabilities for hacking was a closely held secret.1 In fact, in response to EFF’s FOIA suit to get access to the official U.S. policy on zero days, the government redacted every single reference to “offensive” use of vulnerabilities. To add insult to injury, the government’s claim was that even admitting to offensive use would cause damage to national security. Now, in the face of EFF’s brief marshaling overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the charade is over.

In response to EFF’s motion for summary judgment, the government has disclosed a new version of the Vulnerabilities Equities Process, minus many of the worst redactions. First and foremost, it now admits that the “discovery of vulnerabilities in commercial information technology may present competing ‘equities’ for the [government’s] offensive and defensive mission.” That might seem painfully obvious—a flaw or backdoor in a Juniper router is dangerous for anyone running a network, whether that network is in the U.S. or Iran. But the government’s failure to adequately weigh these “competing equities” was so severe that in 2013 a group of experts appointed by President Obama recommended that the policy favor disclosure “in almost all instances for widely used code.” [.pdf]

For more information, follow this link